Imagine saying: "The blacks in New York, they're so much more sophisticated than in Boston, and so much better looking." As an American, I bristled at the woman's remarks. But is it better to say something and risk offense? At least then the possibility of dialogue and of reconciliation is opened. A candor exists here in talking about race that doesn't exist in the United States.

Keke — a black South African who grew up in Soweto — raised the idea of political correctness, how it gets taken too far, as we drove through Johannesburg. "Certain conversations you have to have," he said. Then, he spotted three white people standing on a street corner, smoking. "Hey, look," he joked, pointing out the window, "white people," as though we were on safari and they were exotic game.

I told him about the reticence, in the States, to talk about race, almost a taboo.

"It's possible to let too much go unsaid," he said. And in all the talk of transcending boundaries, bridging divides, the world joined by a ball, Keke summed it up in two sentences: "It is not a black problem or a white problem," he said. "It is a human problem."

Balls of fire For one month every four years, the United States — try as it might — can’t impose its vacuous culture on the rest of the planet. The World Cup arrives and the Americans are, at best, an afterthought.

Bandwagon fans gear up Only after buying a "Beat L.A." T-shirt, methodically checking ESPN for World Cup updates, and watching every installment of the NBA Finals with a religious fanaticism, has the hard truth settled in: I am a bandwagon fan.

ON CARPENTRY AND COLLEGE | October 20, 2011 Age 30, I quit the Phoenix and ended up with a job as an apprentice to a carpenter. Sawing, chiseling, hammering, nail-gunning, tiling, sanding, slotting, framing, hauling, measuring, and sweeping are less obvious outcomes of an undergraduate career in the liberal arts. College, in strange and unexpected ways, prepared me for this sort of work. And in others, did not prepare me at all.

PHDISASTERS | April 27, 2011 I knew a man pursuing a PhD in literature. His dissertation had to do with humor as a form of dissent in 20th-century literature. And how enthused he was at first! How passionate and excited.